Today I met with Claire Edwardes and talked about all of my ideas for the project and how I hoped Ensemble Offspring could be involved. Claire seemed to love the idea and is going to go and talk to the rest of the group about it and sort out a quotation for the museum on (1) workshops on board  the boat, hopefully meeting with engineers (over this coming summer?); (2) recording acoustic music at the Sydney Conservatorium in our studios which will be overlaid in the final ‘soundtrack’ with any sampled industrial sounds, synthesised sounds and sampled orchestrations (for the ‘filmic’ moments); and (3) perhaps performing some of the more through-composed lines for those instruments live at the launch of the project next year, on the vessels themselves.

This has got me thinking more and more about the instrumentation, as in the entry on 22/8 with the mock-up metallic sounds. Balancing it all is the key – that little piece was quite frenetic, and could be quite overwhelming in a space. In many ways the ‘bareness’ of the texture with four players is more confronting than the wash of a symphony orchestra. I had talked about the idea of creating synthesised sounds to imitate ‘industrial’ sounds, but now I’m thinking that the instruments real metallic sounds can be naked, like that, while synthesised sounds and production can ‘fill in the holes’, giving a consistent listening experience. I may do a little more work on that piece with some synths. Anyway, time to write to Hamish, and tell him about my conversation with Claire.